Marking Tapes as Free

Instead of erasing tapes, you can mark tapes as free. During this operation, Veeam Backup & Replication deletes from backup and tape catalogs information about backup contents stored on tape. Data written to tape remains intact.

To mark tapes as free:

1. Open the Tape Infrastructure view.
2. Navigate to the list of tapes either under Media Pools or under Libraries > LibraryName node > Media > Online.
3. Select tapes you want to mark as free and click Mark as Free on the ribbon.
   Alternatively, you can right-click selected tapes and select Mark as free from the shortcut menu.
4. In the displayed dialog box, click Yes.

After a tape is marked as free, Veeam Backup & Replication removes from the catalog information about contents on this tape.

If you want Veeam Backup & Replication to automatically reuse the tape for storing new backups, instead of just marking it as free, move it to the Free media pool, as described in Moving Tapes to Another Media Pool.